Ariella Mostkoff

In his book, Exposing the Magic of Design, Jon Kolko references Johnson-Laird’s theory of mental models to explain how we understand the world and cope with complexity. As described by Johnson-Laird, a mental model is an internal representation that corresponds to the external world, and represents a form of embodied knowledge. As such, we construct mental models in order to understand the world, conceive possibilities, and manipulate abstract content. A mental model consists of both elements that correspond to perceptual entities, i.e. physical models, and elements that correspond to abstract notions, i.e. conceptual models. Physical and conceptual models represent systemic levels that build in complexity. Continue Reading →

In an effort to ground the concept of mental models in the field of design, I created a taxonomy of artifacts- mobile applications, touchpoints, experiences, and designed spaces- representing a variety of domains and addressing various types of information-need that support behaviors associated with the process of searching/finding. The major groupings of artifacts reflect both physical and conceptual mental models, and are organized by color. Continue Reading →

As computers are more and more becoming embodied as embedded aspects in our experience of our everyday environment, embodied interaction rethinks the borders between digital artifacts. A shift towards embodied interaction is motivated by the recognition that to incorporate even further human skills requires moving computation ’out of the box’ and ‘into our environments’. Continue Reading →